Cellular communications systems continue to grow in popularity and have become an integral part of both personal and business communications. Cellular telephones allow users to place and receive voice calls most anywhere they travel. Moreover, as cellular telephone technology has increased, so too has the functionality of cellular devices and the different types of devices available to users. For example, many cellular devices now incorporate personal digital assistant (PDA) features such as calendars, address books, task lists, etc. Moreover, such multi-function devices may also allow users to wirelessly send and receive electronic mail (email) messages and access the Internet via a cellular network and/or a wireless local area network (WLAN), for example.
As a result, users continue to spend more time using their mobile devices during the course of a day, as opposed to early cellular phones that were used only for phones calls. This has resulted in a significant interest from the advertising community in targeting advertisements to mobile devices.
One exemplary system for providing advertising to a handheld computer is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,874,018 to Wu. The handheld computer includes a screen for displaying visual content received from a network and configured for playing an audio message associated with the visual content. A request for content from the handheld computer is received, and an advertisement is associated with the request for content. The requested content is sent to the handheld computer for display on the screen of the computer, and the associated advertisement is sent to the computer for playing over an audio output device of the handheld computer.
Despite the advantages of such approaches, further functionality may be desirable in providing notifications, such as advertisements, to mobile wireless communications devices.